Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)
”Has she any feeling to display? Can we expect her to have that kind of feeling for a man who might be her father?”
”My dear Susan, time will show. I bring love to the union enough for both, and it will be strange if I do not make her happy. If you knew the story of my youth--which you do not, and it is not needful that you should--but you have known my later life; how I have been alone while others have been making themselves tender ties and households.
Do you think it can be anything but dreary to feel that you have no one to call your own--that you can shelter your whole family under your hat-brim?”
”What of your nieces? What of poor Caleb's children?”
”You know I am fond of them, Susan. I do not think you will accuse me of being a neglectful uncle or brother-in-law.”
”And yet you are going to cast us off, and put this stranger in our places.”
”Not in your places. Why should it make any difference between us? The girls like her.”
”That only shows their innocence and ignorance of the world, poor things.”
”I do not see it, Susan. If it is their prospects you mean, they are independent already; but you may rest a.s.sured they will both come in for a slice, when my belongings come to be divided.”
”There! It only wanted that!” cried the sister-in-law, seizing the opportunity to let off steam in a burst of indignation. ”It only wanted insult to heap upon the injury. You must fling your testamentary intentions in my teeth, as if I were a mercenary person, in case I should not feel crushed and humbled sufficiently under your latest whim! Have I failed to keep up the family respectability and position as I should? I am growing too old, I suppose, to be the Mrs Naylor of Jones's Landing. Somebody younger must be found to lord it over the people, and turn their heads with follies and expensive notions they cannot afford; and I am to be the neglected dowager living in retirement with my fatherless girls.... But she shall never have it all her own way, Joseph Naylor, if _I_ can help it; and if she has, it will be still worse for _you!_” And so saying, Susan got up and flung out of the room, retiring to her chamber, where a full hour elapsed before her heat subsided, and she was able to see how foolish and unreasonable, not to say imprudent, she had been.
Joseph, as was natural, saw it at once, but he was too happy to be easily annoyed. He rose as she did, stepped out on the gallery, and so away, merely whispering to himself, half aloud--
”Poor Susan! It must be a disappointment, and hard to bear. But she is not half as bad and worldly as she pretends. She will be ashamed and sorry enough when next we meet. My cue is to forget this little tantrum altogether.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
”THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD.”
It was long before Gilbert Roe could go to sleep, and the occupants of adjoining chambers had abundant opportunity to sympathise with him. He could not rest peacefully in his bed, and was driven to get up and pace his room after his neighbours had retired. He thought he would smoke, but could not find a light, so groped his way down pa.s.sages and staircases, where only a lamp was left burning here and there, stumbling over boots at bedroom-doors, and arousing echoes in the slumbering house, to ask for matches from the night-watchman.
Returned to his room he could not sit and smoke, but must go out upon the gallery, marching up and down through the night-watches, till every sleeper lay awake counting his footfalls and wis.h.i.+ng him a cripple. Towards morning he succeeded in growing drowsy, and turned in, and this time slept till it was late. Maida joined him at the breakfast-table, wis.h.i.+ng him good morning with an easy intimacy of proprietors.h.i.+p, which provoked him for some reason which did not appear. However, her company was a relief after the weary solitude of his midnight vigil, and in spite of himself he relaxed and grew sociable.
”Come to church, Gilbert?” she said, when breakfast was over; and he, having nothing better to do, consented. They walked leisurely along the sands, as did also a good many of the younger company, who objected to being mewed up in an omnibus.
”Let us step out a little,” said Gilbert, ”and join those folks in front.”
”It is too warm for stepping out much,” she answered. ”We have a long walk before us. If we hurry we will be flushed and crumpled, and not fit to be seen, when we go into church. And it is a close little place at the best.”
”Never mind. We can stop outside when we get there; but let's be cheerful in the meantime. I see Miss Deane in that crowd on in front.
Come, let's join them.”
”Oh yes! and that little f.a.n.n.y Payson you were so set on dancing with last night,” Maida answered, a little crossly. ”You'll have to take to surf-bathing if you want to get in with that crowd. I think them real frivolous, myself, and mighty conceited and stuck-up. My father might have been a senator too, by now, if he had lived. He ran for Congress the year I was born; and if he did not get sent there, it was none of his fault.”
”Never mind, Maida; you may go to Congress yourself yet, when the woman's suffrage law pa.s.ses. But you must take to wearing gla.s.ses”--she had dropped using her goggles, I must observe, since Gilbert's appearance--”to show that you have intellect. Intellect, short-sight, and high culture, all run together, like a three-abreast Russian team. If it wasn't for their short-sightedness they would drop the high culture altogether, for they would see it don't pay in this country. We have only a few professors and scientists all told, you see. Three or four dozen women could marry them all, and the rest of the men don't care to be kept humble all the time, by living with wives who know more than themselves. That's why so many spectacled women go lecturing. It's because n.o.body wants to marry them.”
”To hear you talk, Gilbert, one would say you were just dreadful. You do not really mean, I'm sure, that you believe a woman makes a better wife for being ignorant or a fool. What companions.h.i.+p can there be between an intelligent man and an empty-headed doll? And perhaps you are not aware, but it is a fact, that the most successful female lecturers are married women; and very poorly off their families and invalid husbands would be, if they could not earn money that way.”
”Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the 'ologies.'”
”Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education.
To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who sc.r.a.pes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in all the ill.u.s.trated papers. But if she had had culture, think what such a woman would have become!”